How to Batch Resize in Photoshop

While it’s relatively easy to write an Action to resize a series of images in Photoshop, it’s easier still to get Photoshop to do all the work for you. Photoshop comes with an image processor script that will open, resize and save a series of images for you – very quickly.

Step 1

Step 2

In Step 1 of the dialog, select to either resize the images already open in Photoshop (if you have them open), or click Select Folder and select a folder of images to resize. Select Include all Subfolders to include all subfolders of the selected folder.

Step 3

In Step 2 of the dialog select where to save the images. If you select Save in Same Location Photoshop creates a subfolder in which to save the images so you don’t have to worry about overwriting them. If a subfolder by the same name already exists with images with the same names in it, Photoshop saves to that folder but adds a sequential number to the file so you still won’t lose your files. Alternatively, you can select a different folder for the resized images.

Step 4

In Step 3 of the dialog select the file type to save in. For the web Save as JPEG is the obvious choice. Set a Quality value in the range 0 to 12 where 12 is the highest quality and 0 the lowest. For better color on the web, select Convert profile to sRGB and ensure that Include ICC Profile at the foot of the dialog is checked so the profile will be saved with the image.

To resize the images, select the Resize to Fit checkbox and then set the desired maximum width and height for the final image. For example, if you type 300 for the width and 300 for the height, the image will be resized so that the longest side of any image, whether it be in portrait or landscape orientation will be 300 pixels. The images are scaled in proportion so they won’t be skewed out of shape.

The Width and Height measurements do not have to be the same so you could, for example, specify a Width of 400 and a Height of 300 and no image will have a width greater than 400 or a height greater than 300.

Step 5

If desired you can save in another format as well by selecting its checkbox so you can save the same image in different formats and at different sizes in the one process. You can also select to run an Action on the images, if desired.

When you’re ready, click Run and the images will be automatically opened (if they are not already open), resized, saved and closed.

To see your resized images, choose File > Open and navigate to the folder that you specified the images to be saved to. If you chose to save as JPEG, the images will be in a subfolder called JPEG, for PSD in a folder called PSD and so on.

So whenever you need to resize a lot of images for uploading to the web, for example, the Photoshop Image Processor script makes the job almost painless.

If you enjoyed this article, you might also like...

Helen Bradley is a Lifestyle journalist who divides her time between the real and digital worlds, picking the best from both. She writes and produces video instruction for Photoshop and digital photography for magazines and online providers world wide. She has also written four books on photo crafts and blogs at Projectwoman.com.

It’s n­ot ea­sy to ge­t a jo­b th­at y­ou lo­ve… Sometimes colleagues can annoy you, or maybe you have long working hours and offcourse there is always your boss who gives you hard time all the time… But what would you say if i tell you that there is a job where you can be your own boss and in the same time earn in the range of $100-400/daily while working for 10-13 hours a week -> -> Check it out!!! <-

Erin Stidham

I’m trying to resize an image in photoshop elements 11 to a 5×7, but every time I try it always turns out to be 5.25×7. I have no clue how to fix it, please help.

Helen Bradley

Erin, the problem is that your image does not have a size ratio of 5:7 (width to height) so you can’t resize it to 5×7 (and if you could, it would have to be squeezed to do so).

So, instead you should crop the image (using the Crop tool) to a 5 x 7 inch ratio. In doing this, a small portion of the image will be discarded, but this is how it should be done as, in this case, your image won’t be squeezed to make it fit.

Erin Stidham

Is there anything I could do with my camera, like the demonsions or anything like that that would allow me to reisize without cropping out most of the photo?

Helen Bradley

Eric, you shouldn’t have to crop more than .25 of an inch off one side of the photo – if your photos are resizing to 5.25 x 7 all you need to do is to crop 0.25 inches off one side – that is far from being most of the photo.
What you should be doing is, in Photoshop Elements Editor, choosing the Crop tool, set it to 5 x 7 and then size the crop rectangle so it fills the photo with just a small sliver to be removed from one side. That’s it. Perhaps try this and let me know if you still have problems?

Sarah

Thank you for this tutotrial. Worked perfectly!

Vic

thanks

Bruno Lazaro

U cant limit the size of what something will be printed on. Many programs (including windows right click print) ignore the DPI setting.

Some older comments

Dj Sifty

September 24, 2013 03:55 pm

Wow!! amazing tutorial .. very nice and easy option which I found in CS9, batch file size conversion to folder and sub-folder..
I want to ThanQ for this a well explained in simple language a process so helpful with screenshot.

ejm

September 20, 2013 03:21 am

this is all fine, but I how to you save a file with s prefix or suffix i.e. filename_small.jpg?

Mari

August 10, 2013 05:30 am

Thank you! This is amazing! I have a question, though. I saw that there is no Resolution box, but instead there is a Quality choice. I am asuming and I might be wrong that the quality option replaces the resolution option. If so, what number should I set for the quality ( You mentioned that it is from 0-12) to equal 72ppi resolution. Thank you so much!!!!

Mia's Musings

August 2, 2013 03:22 am

Thank you! Just what I needed!!!!

Alvin

July 31, 2013 09:35 am

You just saved me so much work. It is such a simple, elegant and clear tutorial. Thanks very much indeed.

Ellis Wood

July 16, 2013 07:33 pm

Awesome and simple tutorial. Saved me hours of work :)

Dan

June 27, 2013 06:13 am

A delightful tutorial. I have just completed a file of images and resized each image so that I can forward through email to a colleague. many thanks. I have have your sight bookmarked. Regards
Dan

Deanna

June 26, 2013 11:52 pm

I am using photoshop cs can anyone advise on how to do this with that program?

Van Middleton

June 21, 2013 01:13 pm

The problem with this method is that it doesn't sharpen them! I put together some actions on my destination wedding photography site that will do the trick, you need to run them as droplets, though see here.

Matt

June 21, 2013 03:12 am

Thank you! I have 1,100 pictures to resize so this will save me a ton of time.

biju

May 28, 2013 08:03 pm

Thanks a lot

Averil

May 15, 2013 04:32 am

Just wanted to say 'Thank you!' I've got 200 holiday snaps that need resizing to be uploaded to an older SD card for a digital photo frame. So much easier to do it in Photoshop!

Guy Clothier

May 6, 2013 07:42 am

I would just like to thank you for a well explained in simple language a process so helpful its amazing I thank you very much. We process many images daily and this is pure magic for us to uplaod to the web.

Take care and keep up being thoughtful.

Cheers

Guy

Sean

May 5, 2013 01:25 pm

WOW you just saved me about an hour or two.... THANKS !

Nick Ray Ball

April 29, 2013 12:42 am

IMPORTANT: The chap who recommended the fast stone photo re sizer was correct, its free a superior, as you can re-size to height only, useful if you have 15,000 villa photographs to which you need to turn into 120 px high thumbnails to work with specific gallery software. Plus it can add sharpen, and contrast, I added sharped of 8 (USM) and added 4 contrast.
This was on 28th April 2013, the images will be on line in a week at www.CTLvillas.com , have a look for your self, and if you do not think its the best looking property website in the world, by quite a long way, then, please show me one better so I can copy it
Cheers NickRayBall
www.Nick Ray Ball.com

gtan

April 28, 2013 06:31 pm

Thanks, a really helpful tricks everyone needs

Steven Silva

March 23, 2013 12:15 pm

This was very useful. Clean and Concise.

Thank You.

...I don't know how many times i did this in paint manually. I figured there had to be a better way and you showed it to me. BTW word press gave me an error the first time I tried to thank you. If this is posted twice, sorry in advance.

Steven

Raihan Taher

March 19, 2013 02:27 am

Thank You Very Much. It saved lot of my time. And your tutorial was very clear and beautifully written. Keep up the good works.

Darrell

February 20, 2013 08:21 am

Helen, Thank you so much for this tutorial. It is very helpful and complete. It allowed me to quickly resize hundreds of photos. Saved me loads of time. Will save more in my future too.

Mira Talo

February 18, 2013 05:24 am

Thank you so much for the help - couldn't done without your tutorial

Bill

January 9, 2013 03:27 am

Do you have a tutorial for earlier versions on pshop.. I am using Photoshop 7 with windows 7.which doesn't have scripts...
If I go File>Automate>Batch>..... at this point I only seem to have options for effects... not resizing...
any suggestions? Thanks

Nisse

December 20, 2012 05:43 am

If you make a script in Photoshop using fit image and save as bmp that should work I think if all files are kept in a single folder...

Jon Carderbaumson

December 16, 2012 09:56 pm

Ana Says:
January 28th, 2012 at 11:26 am

"I was reading it and it’s very helpful, the question is it only give the options to save them as JPEG ,TIFF or PSD, how to save them on other formats like GIF or PNG? it has none options. Any suggestion will be really appreciated. Thank you"

I have the same problem as Ana. In my case I want to resize 55 BMP's to write my own bootloader animation on Win 7.

Since it has been almost 12 months since the lovely Ana thought somebody here might help her, I best give up and go resize all 55 images manually. I'll have a cup of tea first and toast Ana before I slurp it.

Nisse

December 15, 2012 10:46 pm

Thank You! Photoshop did the job. 1411 pics in 19 minutes. So I am free this weekend. Time for some Christmas shopping.

Nisse

December 15, 2012 10:06 pm

Actually seems like in Photoshop the do not upsize small pics command is automatically applied but one problem remains: got loads of subfolders would like the pics to stay in them and replace the original files with the folder names intact.

(maybe I start trying to solve the problem by reading thru all the comments on this page)

Nisse

December 15, 2012 09:39 pm

Would like to try Photoshop resizing but problem is my batches often contains pics both bigger and smaller than set goal of for example max 800 pixels longest side. Just want the big pics downsized while the small pics are left as is. Using Irfanview solves this but application is not perfect because if batch contains CMYK pics the color will look just awful.

Nisse

December 15, 2012 09:30 pm

I am currently using Irfanview that will resize and save as PNG

Ellen Kozak

December 11, 2012 06:43 am

Saving images as PNG files?

I need to batch resize and save my images as PNG files.
There are only options for saving resized files as JPEG, PSD and TIFF. Can you advise me of how to do this?

Behzad

December 11, 2012 01:04 am

Thank you very much.

Todd

November 3, 2012 11:12 am

I see this is old, but I just found it today! And I have to thank you !! This has saved me a lot of time i never knew I could do this with PS! Cheers!

Jem Shaw

August 3, 2012 07:50 pm

Thank you!

I'd been kicking laptops, cats and children because of the unreliability of running a batch resize, which was working about one run in three. I'd never even looked under the Scripts item. A few clicks and 600 images resized correctly. My laptop, cats and children thank you too.

Kelsey @ Crappy Kid Art

July 31, 2012 12:17 am

This was EXACTLY what I was looking for. I knew there had to be a way! Thank you!

Fujio W

May 18, 2012 12:32 am

You couldn't have explained this any simpler! Thanks!

Ian

May 4, 2012 02:20 am

Awesome. Thanks. Worked like a charm.

angela

April 16, 2012 04:54 am

thank you! I was able to resize my pictures and create thumbnails to include in my slideshow.

Jon Ballard

March 30, 2012 05:30 am

You Rock. This saved me hours!!!!

Lrose

March 20, 2012 08:27 am

For some reason I can't find the create "new action" under the default action window on cs5

Art Davis

March 19, 2012 11:56 am

Absolutely clear and simple - Thank you!

Digital Camera Photography

March 17, 2012 08:23 pm

Very nicely explained :)

avnish

February 28, 2012 08:27 pm

excellent its working

thanks for article

ronanb

February 8, 2012 03:37 am

there so many ways to resize image online or digital imaging software .. the most important are detail after image resized.

just for share .. how to resize image using lightroom and photoshop for better result, check it here http://photograpyreview.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-to-resize-images.html

Ana

January 28, 2012 11:26 am

I was reading it and it's very helpful, the question is it only give the options to save them as JPEG ,TIFF or PSD, how to save them on other formats like GIF or PNG? it has none options. Any suggestion will be really appreciated. Thank you.

@bAdstylee

January 27, 2012 11:52 am

Look at a nice dynamic free prog called ifran view. Google it. I tried this for theming on the iPhone iPad and it's not the best. But thanks a lot for this page, put me on to a new part of ps..still learning every day. Thanks a lot for the post, totally helped. But for batching ifran is pretty awesome. But like I said I did use ps first so im partial? Hahaha cheers!

Liz

January 21, 2012 02:05 pm

This is great, but I would like to change the resolution- not the pixels. Is there any way to do this through the same steps you provided? I dropped down the pixels to 902x599 (which is what comes out when I drop a regular image down to 72dpi) but I don't want others to be able to take the file in and blow it up to print... I only want this sized for the web. I understand that it's at a small size as it is, but if it's sized small and the resolution is still up around 300- can't it easily be resized for print? That's what I want to avoid. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Ameerah Cetawayo

December 29, 2011 09:06 am

This tutorial just saved me so much time! Excellent!

Dave

December 3, 2011 05:21 am

Really great tutorial. About 1 hour ago my wife asked me to resize about 600 images for her. I have divided them into landscape and portrait and Photoshop is just chugging through the landscapes now. You've saved me hours and hours.

gerard

November 17, 2011 03:15 am

Thank you for a clear, informative and accurate explanation. It was very helpful.

Gf

Susan

November 14, 2011 06:47 pm

Love the tutorial! Best thing I have ever seen. I have been doing things the SLOW way for a long time now. Just saved 100 images in one size and thought I would google if this can be done. THANK YOU SOOO MUCH!

Timo

November 9, 2011 09:00 am

Thank you for the tutorial. I searched several times for this solution, and kept getting Automate>Batch instructions, which for some reason would not work with my pdf images. Scripts solved it. I just added one action to change the ppi resolution, and my 2,464 image project is complete! Thanks again, and great work. I hope the comments help move your tutorial higher in the serps!

telebob

November 8, 2011 09:42 am

I am on a Mac with CS4. I tried your File/Scripts etc. method but no 'Image Processor' heading comes up in my popup menu structure.... What version of Photoshop are you suggesting has this feature?

EHawk

October 29, 2011 11:50 pm

Ithink the tutorial is fantastic and the step by step instructions with images really helps. I have CS2 and it works on that so it is not just the more recent versions. My problem is the same I want to Resize my photos into regular sized 'tiles' for the internet. Like other readers I have a mix of landscape and portrait pictures but can't seem to get my pictures to change size.... HELP

Ewolf.girl

October 29, 2011 04:04 am

Can you not also batch convert from RGB to CMYK?

Karrie

October 13, 2011 04:55 am

Fantastically useful tip - and not something one would stumble across as Script seems a strange choice .. why is Photoshop so darned lacking in intuitive mindset??!! Thank you.

YMCA Webmaster

September 30, 2011 05:03 am

The "open first image to apply settings" feature will not work for me. I want to change the resolution from 300 to 72 pixels/inch, and use the Bicubic Sharper feature.

It does not allow me to apply settings -- it simply starts converting all the photos right away, keeping them 300 pixels/inch.

Diane

September 18, 2011 04:58 am

Thank you for the short tutorial on resizing a batch - this was exactly what I was looking for:-)

Frank Freeman

September 13, 2011 07:11 am

If you're using the File>Scripts>Image Processor proceedure to resize all imagages in a folder, does it copy and send another image to the new folder, or does it actually resize the originals? I want to reduce a very large quantity of photos for web and copyright, but want to keep the original size and quality of the original photos. I have nearly 3,000 images to process. Thank You.

fotografii aniversari

August 23, 2011 11:24 pm

Awesome! I didn't know that until know, but it's a must. This was indeed very helpful! Thank you!

hiki

August 11, 2011 11:22 pm

dear Helen,

I use the PS CS4 on my Win7.
your post is very helpful but there's one problem I simply can not solve.
when I use the image processor like you posted it works fine on let's say 90%. the other 10% of my pics it doesn't save them and give me the error message "not possible to create a file, please check your access authority to this folder [path...]\JPEG"

so, I can't access the folder freshly new created by photoshop? I don't understand it...
please let me know if you have an idea! would be great, thanks!

p.s. I'm always logged in as Admin on my Win7, so I can't imagine there's something I did check or uncheck wrong in my access options... (?)

romana fotograf Praha

July 29, 2011 12:18 am

This so useful. Still hoping someone comes up with a portrait/landscape technique avoiding multiple folders. Maybe a script or something?

ganjaman420

July 12, 2011 11:37 pm

@Lukhasz - most people who want to perform such a task already have Photoshop installed. i googled 'batch resize photoshop' and got this. perfect

Dianne - Bunny Trails

July 10, 2011 07:28 am

Thank you SO much!!!! I never knew about this and desperately needed it. I just had 61 images I had to resize and this did it superbly. Thanks again!! :-)

Vaibhav

June 21, 2011 09:36 pm

Hi,

I have downloaded PS CS5 extended trial version, i am trying to run batch job for resize pictures.
When i ran Image processor its resize the pictures, but not in same size which i have given. For example- I have pictures size 1024 X 724 pixcel and i want to resize them to 314 X235 pix. its not resizeing in same scale.

Devaditya

June 10, 2011 08:02 pm

Thank you very much for this tutorial.
It was very helpful.

Nikki

June 9, 2011 07:48 am

This was very helpful! Thank you! One question, do you know if there is a way to batch resize and NOT constrain the proportions? I ask because I have a customer who sent me 39 images that were supposed to be 640x200...they sent them as 600x240. Ugh.

Molly

May 17, 2011 06:04 am

Thanks so much for posting this. Love that you have pictures so it's easy to understand. I'm doing this right now on some images! Thanks again!

Del

May 15, 2011 09:44 am

Thanks this info was right on.

Pascal

April 20, 2011 06:20 am

Excellent description and advice. It worked a treat.
Thank you

Mary Alice

March 28, 2011 09:43 am

Seems to work great except for one thing and I can't figure it out. When image processing about 50 images from tiff to jpeg, a message comes up as it is processing each image and says "feather" is not available and I have to press continue and then it proceeds to the next one. Seems as though a "feather" option is buried somewhere in there but I can't or don't know how to locate it and remove it! Or do i have some corrupted file? Driving me nuts!!!

Expert User

March 11, 2011 02:31 am

@Skye, why would you need lightroom when you have photoshop installed..??? Photoshop processes RAW Format the same as lightroom so why have both installed. Do you have photoshop elements installed as well. You only need Photoshop and you have everything.

skye

March 5, 2011 01:11 am

i love the image processor option in photoshop. i have been using it for months. however, it has suddenly disappeared from my file menu. when i click on "scripts", the "image processor" option is no longer there. i have not done anything to photoshop or bridge since the last time i used the image processor. the only thing i have done is installed lightroom. could something have happened during the install? something i clicked that changed the settings? i have restarted and refreshed the settings in photoshop and bridge and nothing. HELP!

Paco

March 4, 2011 10:49 am

Thank you very much. I have used this tip to resize all my pictures and copy them to my tablet.

Christina

February 26, 2011 04:10 am

Thanks so much this was a huge help. I appreciate you taking time to post this. Thanks a bunch!!!

Raquel

January 13, 2011 10:13 pm

Great tutorial...thanks! I finally saved all my photos in a disc.

K

January 5, 2011 08:02 pm

I have an issue as well that I can't find a solution for. I have been trying for about 5 hours now.

I have a folder with 2,000 hi res images. I need to resize them to be 72dpi and MAXIMUM 350 pixels on either width or the height for web product images. My images are either square or rectangular (both horizontal AND verticle). The square ones are fine. The rectangular images are not. The smaller side of the image is 350 pixels. The longer side is giant. I can get it to be proportionate by typing 350x350 in the image processor itself instead of using an action I have saved, but then they are all still 300dpi. If I change the resolution to low-res, the images are way too small. It does not allow me to change the resolution before manually typing in size in the processor.

For example I have an image that was resized to 350x1200. It needs to be more like 90x350. It CANNOT be over 350.

I have tried everything and am so extremely frustrated right now because for whatever reason, when recording an action and resizing an image you can't say "I want it to be proportionate to 350x350 but the max on either side should be 350". It only records ONE SIZE, either Width or Height. If I did it unproportionate and defined both sides, then the images are skewed. If I define the width, close the window, and then define the height to ensure the sizes are recorded with the action, well then my horizontal images (with say a height of 100) stretches out.

andreiuc88

January 3, 2011 08:17 pm

Sorry, double post.

andreiuc88

January 3, 2011 08:16 pm

Until someone can find a solution to the problem above, I have put pictures in two folders: landscape and portrait.
But here is a thing that drives me insane: I crop pictures using a freeware program, JPEG Crops. I crop all of them to 4x5, so I can later batch resize them in PS, using your method. I need to make them 600x480, so I crop them 4x5 - a perfect fit. But some of them turn out 600x479, or 599x480. I don't know what to do, they should be exactly 600x480, because I have cropped them to 4x5. But I lose one pixel somewhere, and I don't know why.
Can someone help me?

andreiuc88

January 3, 2011 08:15 pm

Until someone can find a solution to the problem above, I have put pictures in two folders: landscape and portrait.
But here is a thing that drives me insane: I crop pictures using a freeware program, JPEG Crops. I crop all of them to 4x5, so I can later batch resize them in PS, using your method. I need to make them 600x480, so I crop them 4x5 - a perfect fit. But some of them turn out 600x479, or 599x480. I don't know what to do, they should be exactly 600x480, because I have cropped them to 4x5. But I lose one pixel somewhere, and I don't know why.
Can someone help me?

andreiuc88

January 2, 2011 06:56 pm

Hello, is there a way to batch crop and resize photos from a folder, that are both landscape and portrait format, to a exact specified size? For example 640 x 480. But I want PS to recognize the long side.

Tom

December 29, 2010 07:58 pm

Viktor & Rolien,

I was struggling with the same problem until I realised you just need to create a custom action to change the resolution. Here's how you'd do this:

1. Open an example image
2. Open the actions pane.l
3. Click "Create New Action" and name it "convert dpi" (which should automatically put you in record mode i.e. red circle lit up).
4. Go to Image > Image Size...
5. Change the resolution to your desired output.
6. Select "percent" from the Pixel Dimenions dropdown and reset this to 100 (make sure Constrain Proportions is selected throughout).
7. Click OK.
8. Click "Stop" on the Actions panel (the square icon, next to red recording icon).
9. Now run the Image Processor instructions as above but select your custom made "convert dpi" in the actions section before running.

I hope that works.

Rolien

December 23, 2010 07:15 pm

Hi helen,

Same as Viktor above, this is very useful, but is there an option to set ppi/dpi values for the resized images at the same time?

Thank you, Rolien

Anne

December 10, 2010 04:01 am

I'm a bit frustrated... maybe someone can help. Photoshop seems to be deciding for me that, as you say, "the images are scaled in proportion." That's all well and good but I need to resize them into a slightly different proportion. I sell books and my standard 6 x 9 cover is 432 x 648 (at 72 dpi) Well, a new promotional site wants thumbnails that are EXACTLY 115 x 180. I put this in the dialog box and Photoshop decides for me that I don't REALLY want 115 x 180, what I REALLY want is 115 x 174.

Looks like I'm stuck doing each one individually or finding some freeware or something that will do what I want!

But thanks anyway for the good article!

Neale

December 7, 2010 02:18 pm

Thanks for the very easy to follow instructions.. :-)

Kevin

November 17, 2010 02:22 pm

Sweet! Can't believe I haven't found this earlier. Thanks for posting.

Gary R

October 29, 2010 08:26 am

This is very helpful but I have a question I'm really surprised hasn't been asked already. If I'm creating thumbnails then I'm probably wanting to display that as a lowres version of my highres. So if I'm making a photo gallery I need both. So after I create my copies of my highres into thumbnails.... how do I also do a batch rename?

My goal would be as follows:
I have (x) number if images in my directory (ie bluesky.jpg, greenball.jpg, ferrari.jpg)
I need an equivalent thumbnail with a name I can parse dynamically through coding.... so I need to rename my thumbnails with something consistent as well (ie bluesky_thumb.jpg, greenball_thumb.jpg, etc).

Does anyone know of a way to modify file names in a somewhat custom fashion dynamically?

BA

October 26, 2010 03:08 am

Thank you, thank you, thank you for this quick and easy helpful explanation. Just to agree with everyone else here...it's saved me TONS of time. Major thank yous :o)

Bryan

October 12, 2010 07:31 am

Thanks for the post.
Very helpful

Mike Behnken

October 7, 2010 04:31 pm

Thanks so much. Not to be redundant but I too have used photoshop for a very long time and have not known how to do this. Your tutorial is perfect and it has saved me tons of time. Much respect!

JJ

October 3, 2010 01:24 am

Thank you, I use Photoshop for a long time ago and I didn't know this feature.

Helen Bradley

August 26, 2010 11:55 pm

@stuart mcrae Hi Stuart. I think you have selected to run the Vignette action at the foot of the Image Processor dialog in the Preferences area. This action needs a selection to be in place on the image to run - hence the error. Disable this option and try again, it should work just fine.

Stuart McRae

August 24, 2010 01:13 pm

I also really appreciate the tutorial as I am working on a 200 plus pic conversion down to a size I can use in Premeire Pro CS5. My problem with File>Scripts>Image Processor is that when I run the conversion, I get an error message saying " The Command "Feather" is not currently available". I can't find an option to turn this off for the conversion. Is there a hidden setting?
Thanks!

Craig Ariano

August 3, 2010 03:52 am

Thanks po posting this information. We have been doing photo shoots for Real Estate, and the MLS upload needs a smaller size that we shoot. Now I can resize the entire stack automatically.
CA

Mike Kent

August 1, 2010 02:17 am

To Beth

I selected 1200 pixels for both width and height, and my images were resized so that the longer side was 1200 pixels -- landscape came out 1200x800, portrait 800x1200 (CS5, Mac).

Mike Kent

August 1, 2010 02:04 am

Any way to get PS to minimize itself before it starts the batch resizing so that the (show-reduce-flicker)->headache thing doesn't happen?

john guate

July 1, 2010 12:40 am

for some reason my ps 4 isn't working i tried about 10 times, i made sure i followed step by step. i have no idea,no matter what size i put in, it just keeps the long side and not the other side. anyway, any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! john

Shannon Hudnell

June 21, 2010 10:42 pm

I've been using Photoshop for years and never knew this could be done! I have asked several people who are very experienced and they didn't know either. Thanks for sharing! This certainly saves a bunch of wasted time.

ProFlex

April 27, 2010 12:16 pm

To Beth - If you have landscape and portrait oriented photos - just put them into different folders, or else one of the two will not come out right.

Also, to Robert: If you have an original image that starts out as 72dpi you can't make it into 300 dpi. Well, you could but the actual size of your new image will be microscopic in size. Getting a new digital camera would be good to do.
For example 4 years ago I got a 8 MegaPixel Kodak C875 camera - at the best setting - All my images start out as 480 Res. and the actual print size at that Res. is 6.8" w X 5.1" h (3264pix w X 2448pix h).

But, I won't print those images at that Res. because it's too high and not needed, you can bump down the Res. to 300dpi (Res.) and still get a crisp detailed picture and also the actual print size will also be bigger that what I listed above.

Good article to help with batch resizing. Photoshop is the only program I know that can work on the images inside a PDF file. Other less expensive programs might do the job but they work only on images. That's where your article and instructions came in handy for me. Thanks and may God bless you for sharing this technique.

Michelle Glisters & Blisters

April 1, 2010 01:30 pm

this was really helpful !!

Edenview

March 24, 2010 11:49 am

Works a treat. It definately saved me time making an action script for it.
Thanks Heaps!

beth

March 21, 2010 09:24 am

My only question is; what if you have landscape and portrait oriented photos in the same folder? If you set the width and height for your photos one orientation's photos are going to be much bigger than the other's are they?

Or is it only resizing the longer of the two (width/ height)?

Rodney Somogyvari

March 1, 2010 05:58 am

Yes thank you - very good tip............and well layed out!

Andy M

February 17, 2010 11:30 pm

Thank you for this information. You have just saved me no end of time on what has become a very rushed job. Thanks.

Lindsey

February 10, 2010 02:36 pm

I love you for this post. Thank you so much

Nick Karvounis

February 9, 2010 04:04 pm

Amazing! I was actually wondering how to do that on photoshop! Thanks

Francis

February 7, 2010 07:01 pm

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. This is what I have been looking for a long time. Many Thanks

Nel's

January 28, 2010 06:08 am

Final someone who know what there talking about.

Thank you

Robert

January 21, 2010 11:16 am

Dear Helen,
I tried to resize a batch of jpeg images in CS4 using the Image Processor script, but it failed. I went through recording of open, resize, save, and close actions, and every time I et the message "sorry I could not process the following image" - and the list of all images in my folder.
The resizing I'm after is actually a resolution change: I have my images at 72 pixels/inch, and I want to increase that to 300 p/in. At the same time, I have to keep my "Resample Image" clicked off, or my files would get really large (something to the tune of 19200x14600 pixels). Keeping resampling off, I get the resolution at 300 p/in, overall size stays at 4752x3168 pixels and picture dimensions change to something around 15 x 10 inches - that's precisely the result I want, but I somehow can't get it done by a batch.
What am I missing? Any ideas?

Tropikal

January 16, 2010 04:03 am

Did not know PS could do that, and so easily too. Thank U so much.

Tanya

January 4, 2010 10:21 am

thank you very much for this how to guide. I only wish this was done before i did all my wedding photos, and a few other friends wedding photos...:P oh well, at lest now i know something new and great about Photoshop and it will be coming in handy again in a few days time

Thanks again :)
Tanya

HShippey

January 2, 2010 06:48 pm

Great tutorial!
I had no idea it could be this easy to re-size in Photoshop This will defenetively speed up my work process.
Thanks a lot.
Helen

Tony Tam

January 1, 2010 03:38 am

Thanks a lot.
It very helpful.

Tony Tam

Bill Fairbairn

January 1, 2010 02:55 am

Mary - a superb tutorial! I have used Actions previously, which were much more complex.

Thanks
Bill

john guate

December 31, 2009 01:59 pm

this is awesome, its just what i needed! i have used lightroom 2 to resize, but this is soooooo much better!
you are truly a life saver!

G Tham

December 31, 2009 01:06 pm

Thank you for this tutorial - you just solved a mystery for me. The sRGB profile was never saving with my file when I resized using this method ... Now I know how important the Save ICC Profile check box is. Something so simply just saved me lots of time. Thanks again!!

Dylan

November 30, 2009 12:06 am

you tutorial saved my life! THANKS ALOT! :D

Ryan

November 1, 2009 07:31 am

Mary:
If you go to the bottom of there is a option that expands the list and show you the option. Maybe someone else can enlighten us as to why it hides some stuff in a lot of the lists.

Rada

October 22, 2009 03:53 am

Dear Helen,
thank you for that great tutorial ! I had a lot of photos and googling how to rersize them at once in PS CS found your excellent lecture! Thanks! God Bless you :)

Katy

September 27, 2009 03:57 am

Thanks for this. I had tried to batch process the images (500+) but kept getting the colour profile dialogue box coming up on opening the image. This sorted it out nicely!

Mary

September 26, 2009 09:20 am

Dear Helen

according which version do you give the tutorial lectures. In my phohoshop I can not find Image processor in Scripts - step 1 .

Thanks for your reply.

Mary

Matt

September 5, 2009 05:28 am

One of my big complaints about GIMP is the lack of a batch processor like this, but I found a great GIMP equivalent here:

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~hodsond/dbp.html

N Warrhol

August 11, 2009 01:14 pm

I have used Photoshop for a myriad of things but I NEVER knew it could do this. I arrived here from a search because I had this huge folder of stuff I wanted cut down but the thought of doing it one by one was just out of the question. I popped open Google and I found your site. AMAZING HOW TO!!!

Thank you thank you thank you !!!

jaggedpixel

June 26, 2009 09:23 pm

Many thanks for that. I spent an hour resizing images the other day. lol

Helen Bradley

June 18, 2009 07:07 am

Hi there Diane

I just checked Costco site for you. They require a minimum 690 x 460 for 4 x 6 printing which suggests they are working at around 115 dpi as a minimum size. I suggest you could probably make them anything more than this and up to 300 dpi and they'd accept them.

To calculate size, at 300 dpi for example, multiply width and height by 300 so, for a 5 x 7 you would need:

(5 x 300) x (7 x 300) image which is 1500 x 2100 pixels.

Do make sure to crop to the same overall ratio eg 5:7 for a 5 x 7 print because your native format isn't in this same ratio so, if you don't crop the photo, Costco will do this and you won't have any control over what is removed.

You will find most programs let you specify the ratio of width to height and the resolution. In Photoshop, click the Crop tool, set the Width in the tool bar to 7in the height to 5in (or vice versa) set the resolution to 300 dpi and drag over the image to crop to this resolution and size.

Diane

June 18, 2009 06:43 am

Thank you for that great tutorial this will be handy for my holiday pictures.

I just have a wee question - my photos come in at 3872x2592 pixels - if I want to resize them say to have them processed at say Costco what size do I make them so they are printable as a 4x6 print? And what DPI do I choose?

rachel

June 13, 2009 03:02 am

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU

-SO MUCH EASIER AND LESS PAINFUL THAN BATCHING!!

teri

June 13, 2009 12:35 am

Great article. I've been using another program to resize but will try this method. Thanks, Teri in Costa Rica

Werner

June 12, 2009 04:11 pm

Very neat and useful ! Thanks a lot !

Werner

Maureen Kovacs

June 12, 2009 10:19 am

I'd love to see an article on Batch resizing in Lightroom 2 or Photoshop Elements. I'm not using Photoshop these days and Lightroom 2 is great.

Thank you so much.

R. Campbell

June 12, 2009 08:32 am

may be missing something here, but I go to “FILE” then down to “PROCESS MULTIPLE FILES” then follow the prompts. very simple, very quick, you don’t even need to open your photos prior to starting. One hint though, it will process ALL the photos in the folder you select, so if you only want to do a few, move them to a temp folder first. ( I use Windows Explorer).
Cheers.
Ross Campbell.

R. Campbell

June 12, 2009 08:31 am

I may be missing something here, but I go to "FILE" then down to "PROCESS MULTIPLE FILES" then follow the prompts. very simple, very quick, you don't even need to open your photos prior to starting. One hint though, it will process ALL the photos in the folder you select, so if you only want to do a few, move them to a temp folder first. ( I use Windows Explorer).
Cheers.
Ross Campbell.

Rusty Sterling

June 12, 2009 03:37 am

This was one of the most useful and practical PhotoShop tutorials I read in a long time. I just did a shoot with about 600 photos, and edited that down to 60 for post processing. The batch conversion rendered the onerous task of down sizing each photo from about a minute each to less than a minute for the entire batch. Thanks for this. It was great.

pavankumar

June 12, 2009 02:27 am

very very neat.wonderful presentation.

Sharon

June 12, 2009 01:31 am

Thank you so much for sharing this system. I know Photoshop can do so much, but without specific directions it can be very diffucult to figure it out.

That was simple and I plan to use it! I usually go into Picasa just to resize for the internet because it is so user friendly.

Thank You!

ERiCK

June 11, 2009 03:03 am

i use http://www.multipleimageresizer.net/

Helen Bradley

June 10, 2009 01:32 am

Knipps, if you have all your images in Lightroom, then perhaps you'd be better off doing the resizing from inside Lightroom? I'll put together a post on this in the next week or two for you.

And yes, you're right in saying that Photoshop CS3 lacks the "Include Subfolders" option which is included in Photoshop CS4.

PMLPhoto

June 9, 2009 06:53 pm

Agree with Marcus - resizing does lead to quality loss. I use either PSE or Capture NX (which does a really god job in my opinion).

@viktor - you don't usually need to worry about dpi, it's just the number of pixels that matter for most applications.

Rowan

June 9, 2009 05:31 pm

I really wish I'd seen this last night!

Bridget Casas

June 9, 2009 09:49 am

Thank you, I was going to write an action to resize and save 500 wedding photos! This will work very well!

Knipps

June 9, 2009 09:45 am

Awesome tutorial! I only have one issue. I'm currently using CS3 and there doesn't appear to be an option to include the subfolders. Is that exclusive to CS4? Disappointing if it is, I have all my photos sorted by date with Lightroom and if I have to pick each one individually it will be really disappointing.

Marcus

June 9, 2009 06:17 am

Lukhasz:

I'm going to venture a guess here and say that I believe Adobe's algorithms for saving files out to .jpegs are probably a bit more advanced than something you're going to find in any freeware program. Anything you do to a jpeg image is going to deteriorate the quality in some way. While the sacrifice in image quality may not be noticeable, I'd prefer to leave my image processing up to the folks at Adobe rather than some freeware developer who threw together a program in their spare time..

But that's just me.

Emre Otlu

June 9, 2009 04:57 am

Thank you so much for your nice tutorial. I was wondering it so much. I hope it'd be a a better alternative for the other batch resizing softwares.

Emre.

Viktor

June 9, 2009 04:42 am

Hi Helen,

this is very useful, but is there an option to set ppi/dpi values for the resized images?

Thanks

Lukhasz

June 9, 2009 04:35 am

I really can't understand why use such advanced program for such simple operatons. It can be done equally good and much easier with different software. I personnaly use and recommend FastStone freeware application - Photo Resizer, or if you also want an image browser - Image Viewer.